The world is Cassie Fremont’s
playground. Her face is on the cover of every newspaper, she has no homework,
no curfew, and no credit limit, and she spends her days traveling the country with
her friends, including a boy who would flirt with death just to turn her head.
Life is just about perfect—except that those newspaper headlines are about her
bludgeoning her crush to death with a paintball gun, she has to fight ravenous
walking corpses every time she steps outside, and one of her friends is still
missing, trapped somewhere in the distant, practically impassable wreckage of
Manhattan. Still, Cassie’s an optimist. More prone to hysterical laughter than
hysterical tears, she’d rather fight a corpse than be one, and she won’t leave
a friend stranded when she can simply take her road trip to impossible new
places to find her, even if getting there means admitting to that boy that she
might just love him, too. Skillfully blending effective horror with unexpected
humor, this diary-format novel is a fast-paced and heartwarming read.

F.J.R. Titchenell is an author
of Young Adult Sci-Fi and Horror fiction. She is represented by Jennifer
Mishler of Literary Counsel and currently lives in San Gabriel, California with
her husband and fellow author, Matt Carter, and their pet king snake, Mica.

The "F" is for Fiona, and on the rare occasions when she can be pried
away from her keyboard, her kindle, and the pages of her latest favorite book,
Fi can usually be found over-analyzing the inner workings of various TV Sci-Fi
universes or testing out some intriguing new recipe, usually chocolate-related.

Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of) is F.J.R. Titchenell’s first novel. Her first novel
coauthored with Matt Carter, Splinters,
will be available fall of 2014.

This is the ultimate zombie novel. The thought
and research that must have gone into it is staggering, and far beyond anything
I can imagine attempting. How is that an influence, then? Because it took me
deeper into a zombie apocalyptic world than anything else and started my brain
really working there.

2: Zombieland

It's a zombie comedy road trip. I think that
influence is pretty clear. I wanted to give YA readers the kind of zombie fun
this movie offers a primarily adult male audience.

3: Shaun of the Dead

This was the first zombie movie I ever saw, and
consequently the first zombie comedy I saw. I have no doubt that mixing zombies
with British romantic comedy did a lot to endear them to me.

4: The Walking Dead (TV)

I became a fan of this one too late for it to
have much of an influence on me as I was writing Confessions of the Very
First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of), but with it being the main work of
zombie fiction everyone knows right now, you can't help it influencing how you
think about zombies, and every other zombie story must be compared and
contrasted with, no exceptions.

5: The Walking Dead (Comics)

For similar reasons to the TV show, the
comparison must be made, even though I didn't read them until after writing the
book. I'm not as big a fan of the comics as the TV show. They have great
moments but tend to devolve into characters having endlessly circular
conversations and monologues about how awful their world is and how awful it makes
them. That was something I always wanted to avoid overdoing.

6: 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later

Another of my earliest introductions to zombies,
and yes, for all storytelling purposes, that is what the monsters of the
28 series are. They’re my favorite serious take on fast zombies. I'm not an
adamant member of either the fast or slow zombie camp. I enjoy them both in
different ways, and the speedwalk-shambling zombies of Confessions of the
Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of) are my compromise.

7: Warm Bodies

I hadn't read Warm Bodies when I wrote Confessions
of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of) either, and even if I had,
they wouldn't have much in common. I don’t romanticize zombies, but Warm
Bodies is the one work I truly love that does. It made me accept that
sentient zombies can be done well, so even though that's not what I do, that
has to count as an influence on how I now look at zombies.

8: Night of the Living Dead

Once I knew I loved zombies, I had to watch the
classic. Plenty of the zombie storytelling elements that Night of the Living
Dead established show up in Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer
(That I Know of), like the old, slow-acting bites that always scared me
most. You'll never meet any Barbaras in my books though. She’s just… just
awful.

9: Return of the Living Dead

These zombies are capable of thought and speech
and are completely unbeatable. My zombies are far more traditional in nature,
but I adore the balance of humor and creepiness this movie achieves.

10: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

I wanted to love this book so much. It's the
first book in a YA zombie epic! How could that not be exactly my thing? As you
can probably guess, I didn't like it, and it ended up being a strong
anti-influence on me. It's not that I don't like dark and/or heavy stuff in
conjunction with either YA or zombies. I do. But this one relies so heavily on
the awfulness of its dystopian post-apocalyptic world to make the story that
the characters get no part in that. Their qualities and relationships are
announced rather than developed organically. As much as I liked the ideas in
the abstract, I think it's that disappointing disconnect I felt from those
characters that made me want to do everything Forest of Hands and Teeth
and its following imitators didn't; get close with these teens stuck at the end
of the world, explore their relationships and let the fun of zombie slaying in.

Phew... zombie apocalypse! Although the author jumps right into this tale and we don't really end up with a lot of background on why everything has gone bonkers, I felt like the novel started off with a bang. I usually don't read many zombie novels. I've just never gotten into the whole being dead thing... LOL However, if all zombie books cracked me up like this one, I'd totally start reading them all.

The characters were great. I'll admit I wish there was alittle more "meat" to the characters sometimes. I felt like, rarely, they felt a little flat but not to the point where I disliked them. Hearing the tale through Cassie's narration was fun. I have to admit, it took me a while to get used to the format - it's sort of like reading a journal that someone has kept. I liked it once I got the feel for it & settled in. I adored the quirky humor throughout the novel which mixed well with all the gory battle &, well, apocalyptic times...

The action sequences were totally awesome & kept me glued to the pages. The novel is very fast paced & action packed. I snorted a few times in between griping my ereader in a death grip through the fight sequences. Awesome job on the author's part.

The plot flowed well for me. I enjoyed it. Although, I thought it was a little crazy that she went through all the effort to save her friend when they didn't really seem friends anymore.. but whatever. It worked. I did think the ending felt a little rushed but it wasn't a buzzkill. Like I said before, the novel was really fast paced so it worked.

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